Friday, January 14, 2011

PUBLIC WORKOVER: City director slaps manager with Sunshine Law crapola

COLUMBIA, 1/14/11 (Beat Byte) -- To a
chief lieutenant who has done nothing but safeguard the public interest --
superintendent Bill Weitkemper -- City of Columbia public works director John
Glascock sent this response to Weitkemper's request for sewer-related
records:

"I am treating this request like a Sunshine request. The
information you requested has been passed on to the

appropriate staff to review and respond to me as to the
time and resources needed to comply. Once I have those numbers, I will let you
know what the cost will be and you can decide if you are willing to
pay for the information."

In those few words, which Weitkemper quotes in a Jan.
11 letter to the City Council, Glascock suggests an underhanded approach to City Hall transparency: Use the
cost of the document dig to discourage the diggers, in this case, one of his
very own employees.

Dogging the watchdog

If ever Columbia had a shining example of a government
watchdog looking out for John and Jane Q. Public, it would be Bill Weitkemper, a
superintendent in the city's public works department widely known as Columbia's
top expert on all things sewer and wastewater.

So carefully has Weitkemper monitored the development of a
new ordinance to correct expensive flaws in city sewer billing practices that
he's sent over 100 emails to both this publication and the Columbia Daily
Tribune.

Weitkemper's latest advisory -- addressed to
Columbia's Mayor, City Council, and "users of the City of Columbia's wastewater
system" -- reminds of the 2,000-page Obamacare plan, approved by Congress after
no one had time to actually read the bill.

With the city's Sewer Task Force "given less than thirty
minutes to review city staff's amended sewer ordinance at their Dec. 15, 2010
meeting, five of six Task Force members voted to recommend the amended ordinance
to Council. What is the rush?" Weitkemper asks.

With the revised ordinance scheduled for Feb. 7
and Feb. 21 city council hearings, "I cannot stress enough the
importance of getting this right," Weitkemper writes. "There are
hundreds of millions of dollars of improvements that must be
made to the city's wastewater system. Basement back-ups and sanitary sewer
overflows are not acceptable. This amended sewer ordinance will establish the
foundation required to generate the revenue needed to pay for the work that has
to be done."

That foundation has been shaky, under-billing big-wig
customers to the tune of roughly $1.2 million annually,

Weitkemper has estimated. Stabilizing the foundation has
been anything but easy on him.

"Not only did the City Manager and Public Works Director
both refuse my offer to assist city staff to develop an amended sewer
ordinance," Weitkemper tells the City Council, "but I received [the
aforementioned] response from the Public Works Director concerning my request
for information."

Glascock's regrettable rejoinder turns the Sunshine Law on
its head, using it to discourage rather than foster transparency.

30,000% Increase?!

Had City Hall listened to Weitkemper early on, some
serious missteps may have been avoided.

A 2007 audit to correct sewer billing flaws, for
instance, had "owners of ten mobile home parks and ten apartment complexes given
a thirty day notice that their base charge was going to increase --
significantly," Weitkemper explains. "Each of these twenty property owners saw
their base charge increase from $73 a year to between $6,000 and $20,000 a
year!"

Those property owners complained that the University of
Missouri, similarly under-billed for sewer service, "was instead given a twelve
month notice," with the increased charges "spread over ten years."

Going over his recommendations, which include changes to
commercial and non-residential sewer billing practices, Weitkemper concludes
that the new ordinance must be "fair and equitable; understandable by customers
and staff; and administrable by staff."

The present proposal, he says, is understandable and
administrable, but not fair and equitable. "Two out of three
is not acceptable," Weitkemper tells the City Council.